Lily Allen Takes Twitter Hiatus After Being ‘Harassed’ by British Soldier

Just a few days after being named one of the Sunday Times’ Top 50 Tweeters, Lily Allen created a minor controversy on the site when she reported a British soldier she thought had made racist and abusive remarks towards her, only to receive a deluge of angry tweets from users who felt she misinterpreted the man’s comments. Bothered by the incident, she later tweeted that she would be taking a hiatus from the site.

According to MTV UK, Allen re-tweeted a message from a soldier named Harry Wilson, who wrote, “All the best with your new family just seen you bought s—- I mean adopted a child from Africa.” Allen reported the man to the Ministry of Defense, writing, “Do you condone (these) racist comments? He needs disciplining.”

An Army spokesperson confirmed the organization opened an investigation, saying that “Racism of any kind is completely unacceptable and the Army has a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of harassment and discrimination.”

In the meantime, other users on Twitter began attacking Allen for reporting a “hero” soldier. Some pointed out that Wilson’s tweet might have simply been missing punctuation, in which case it would have read, “All the best with your new family just seen you bought — sh– I mean adopted — a child from Africa.”

Even that interpretation doesn’t make much sense, since Allen has not adopted any children from Africa, though she is reportedly pregnant with her second child. Allen was unfazed by the criticism, believing that even if Wilson’s comments weren’t racist, they were still inappropriate. “So let me get this straight it’s ‘he was just harassing you, not racially harassing you’. Ah, ok then,” she wrote.

Though Allen announced she would take some time off Twitter, she was back on a few hours later, with an apparent resolution to the controversy: